NEW YORK — “Captain” Lou Albano, who became one of the most recognized professional wrestlers of the 1980s after appearing in Cyndi Lauper’s music video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” died Wednesday. He was 76.
Albano died in suburban New York, said Dawn Marie, founder of Wrestlers Rescue, an organization that helps raise money for the health care of retired wrestlers. He died of natural causes, Marie said.
World Wrestling Entertainment called him one of the company’s “most popular and charismatic legends.” With his Hawaiian shirts, wiry goatee and rubber bands hung like piercings from his cheek, Albano was an outsize personality who, in a career spanning nearly five decades, was known as much for his showmanship as for his talent in the ring.
His fame skyrocketed when he appeared in Lauper’s landmark 1983 music video, playing a scruffy, overbearing father in a white tank top who gets shoved against a wall by the singer.
Albano later appeared in episodes of the TV series “Miami Vice” and in the 1986 movie “Body Slam.”
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